page_title: Inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre
section_title: Animal entertainments
hierarchical_section_title: Inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre / Animal entertainments
caption_attribution_description: Mosaic showing Roman entertainments from the 1st century. Jamahiriya Museum, Tripoli, Libya. From Dar Buc Ammera villa (Zliten).
context_page_description: The inaugural games were held, on the orders of the Roman Emperor Titus, to celebrate the completion in AD 80 of the Colosseum, then known as the Flavian Amphitheatre. Vespasian began construction of the amphitheatre around AD 70 and it was completed by his son Titus who became emperor following Vespasian's death in AD 79. Titus' reign began with months of disasters – including the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, a fire in Rome, and an outbreak of plague – he inaugurated the completion of the structure with lavish games that lasted for more than one hundred days, perhaps in an attempt to appease the Roman public and the gods.
  Little literary evidence survives of the activities of the gladiatorial training and fighting. They appear to have followed the standard format of the Roman games: animal entertainments in the morning session, followed by the executions of criminals around midday, with the afternoon session reserved for gladiatorial combats and recreations of famous battles. The animal entertainments, which featured creatures from throughout the Roman Empire, included extravagant hunts and fights between different species.
context_section_description: Animal entertainments formed a central part of the games and normally took place in the morning. Dio says that over the course of the inaugural games upward of nine thousand tamed and wild animals were slain sometimes by women of no particular prominence. This conflicts with the work of Eutropius who wrote, in the later part of the fourth century, that 5,000 animals were slain during the games.
  Dio and Martial record some of the animals that were exhibited. Dio notes a hunt involving cranes and another involving four elephants, and Martial mentions elephants, lions, leopards, at least one tiger, hares, pigs, bulls, bears, wild boar, a rhinoceros, buffalo and bison (most likely the wisent). Other exotic animals may have been used but are not mentioned; ostriches, camels and crocodiles were commonly used in the games. Giraffes are unlikely to have been featured; Julius Caesar had brought a single giraffe to Rome in 46 BC. Another is not recorded in Europe until the Medici giraffe in 1486, although they were first seen in Rome in 58 BC, and were impressive enough to be detailed in the games of Augustus and Commodus, there is no mention of hippopotami at Titus' games.
  Martial reports a contest between an elephant and a bull, and the elephant, having won, knelt before Titus. This may have formed part of its training, but Martial attributed it to a spontaneous recognition of the Emperor's power. He also mentions a bull enraged by fires in the amphitheatre being tossed around the arena before being killed by an elephant, but there is nothing to indicate that these two epigrams are about the same events or repeated many times during the span of one hundred days of celebration.
  From Martial's account it appears that some of the animals were would not react in the manner expected of them for the crowds which Martial commented on as an opportunity for Titus to exhibit his command of the beasts; the lions ignored their intended prey:
  ...Caesar's lions are won over by their prey and the hare plays safely in the massive jaws.
  The rhinoceros, too, proved difficult to handle. It was initially paraded around the arena, but became infuriated and attacked a bull, to the apparent delight of the crowd. Later, when it was supposed to fight, it had calmed down. Intended to face a company of men armed with spears and a host of other animals, it had to be goaded by "trembling trainers" until it would engage the other combatants:
  ...at length the fury we once knew returned. For with his double horn he tossed a heavy bear as a bull tosses dummies from his head to the stars. [With how sure a stroke does the strong hand of Carpophorus, still a youth, aim the Norcian spears!] He lifted two steers with his mobile neck, to him yielded the fierce buffalo and the bison. A panther fleeing before him ran headlong upon the spears.
  Carpophorus was a skilled bestiarius, specializing in fighting animals in the arena, and is mentioned again by Martial, who compares him to Hercules and praises his abilities in dispatching a bear, a leopard and a lion of "unprecedented size". A frieze from the Temple of Vespasian and Titus (Templum Divi Vespasiani) in the Roman Forum shows events similar to those described by Martial. Two separate sets of decoration show a rhinoceros confronting a bull and a bestarius, possibly Carpophorus, with a spear, facing a lion and a leopard. Carpophorus was not the only beast slayer worthy of mention: another of Martial's epigrams refers to a woman equalling Hercules's feat of slaying the Nemean Lion.
  While the trainers of the rhinoceros may have trembled in fear at the fate that awaited them if their animal failed to perform, and another trainer was savaged by his lion, some were more successful. One trainer was noted for his tigress which, though tame enough to lick his hand, had torn a lion to pieces, "a novelty unknown in any times". It also appears that the crowd was pleased when a bull (perhaps ridden by a bestarius) was hoisted aloft in the arena, but Martial gives little clue as to the nature of this entertainment.
caption: This mosaic from Dar Buc Ammera villa (Zliten) and now in Jamahiriya Museum of Tripoli, Libya, depicts some of the entertainments that would have been offered at the games.
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